you are not dead: a play for modest giving

In 2008 Daniel Reetz and I released this music, image and text collaboration online for free. It filtered through Vancouver peripheries into the imagination of Danielle Marleau of Black Pants and is being adapted as a stage production for premiere mid-May in Vancouver (final dates and venue to be confirmed).

The ingenious premise turns my satirical self help guide into a live-action seminar run by representatives from the Canadian Chapter of the Fakeproject Corporation of America, with Dan’s images incorporated into a devious and dysfunctional PowerPoint. The project also has on board brilliant actor Ryan Beil. This guy is amazing—the Corporation couldn’t be more pleased with its international representation.

With the help of Danielle and a dramaturg, I’ve toiled to retool the guide into a script to the best of my so-not-a-playwright abilities, updating the content to reflect the Canadian condition and sensibilities, to the best of my three-year observations (what, youall thought I was there for library school?). The guide was originally penned in 2005—suffice it to say, post–second-term election Bush Administration America required a much different tone than 2010 Olympic comedown high Vancouver. But so much of it still strikes raw and true, five years later and in a different though certainly not dissimilar culture.

This has been in the works for nearly a year. There have been hints here and there in various ethertubes but no official announcement due to the uncertainty whether wow, is this really happening?